Saturday, January 26, 2008

Quilted sign

I'm getting ready for "Hecho a Mano", (hand made) for those who -no habla espanol- It is a craft show at the MACC (Mexican American Cultural Center in Austin, Tx). I will be teaching beginners quilting as of April 4th and tomorrow I will be at the center with my quilts and doing a demo.
I decided last week that I needed a sign for my business and I went to SIGNS whatever to have a sign made. After I spent like it seemed the whole afternoon deciding on size, font, colors, etc, etc. I placed my order. Well, on the way home I started thinking about the sign and I was not thrilled to have a plastic sign advertising my business that has to do with textiles and thread and suddenly, at the corner of Anderson Mill Rd. and 620 I had an AHA! moment. I would make my own sign with fabrics. What had I been thinking??
After I arrived home I had to call the SIGNS store and cancel my order, the sales person who had helped when ordering me was so nice and he took so much time with my order that it was a little embarrassing having to cancel. Such is life in the big city.
After I took care of that I got excited about my sign or banner, and I started selecting fabrics and printing letters off the computer. I had like 20 fat quarters of yellow fabrics that I knew I could use, in fact, I didn't have to run to the store to buy any fabric (which wouldn't have been a problem, you quilters out there understand what I'm talking about). Of course making the banner took up many hours of my time, but I'm very happy with the results. The banner came out perfectly square (or should I say rectangular) and flat.


I cut like a million stripes of fabric, I thought I was going to go all the way around with the stripy border but it was taking toooo long. Decided just to do the bottom part

After I printed the letters off the computer, I traced them onto fusible web, ironed them to the fabric, cut them up and machine appliqued them.





Top ready to be attached to the border





Top ready to be mounted on the long arm machine for quilting



Voila!!! Quilt/banner/sign ready, after being heavily quilted, and attaching the binding by hand, It took me like 3 hours just to do the binding but I'm compulsive about it, nothing beats the look of a hand sewn binding. The quilt is 16"wide by 60" long.


Close up of the quilting

No comments: